|
Vatican City: Pope Benedict elevated 23 prelates from around the world to the elite rank of cardinal on Saturday and made a plea for an end to the war in Iraq.
The Pope also decried the plight of the country's Christian minority.
One of the new cardinals is Emmanuel III Delly, the Baghdad-based Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, and the Pope used the solemn occasion, known as a consistory, to express his concern for Iraq.
Wearing gold embroidered vestments, the Pope said in his sermon that he had chosen the Iraqi patriarch as a cardinal to express his spiritual closeness to suffering Iraqis.
The other new cardinals are from Italy, Ireland, Germany, the United States, Spain, India, Argentina, Kenya, Mexico, Poland, Senegal, Brazil and France.
Speaking of Delly during the ceremony in St Peter's Basilica, Benedict said Christians in Iraq were "feeling with their own flesh the dramatic consequences of an enduring conflict ... "
The Chaldeans are Iraq's biggest Christian group and the Chaldean rite is one of the most ancient of the Catholic Church.
Many Iraqi Chaldeans have emigrated since the war started. The Vatican has expressed concern before that one of the countries with the oldest Christian traditions could be depleted of its faithful as many leave to escape the violence.
"Let us together reaffirm the solidarity of the whole Church with the Christians of that beloved land and invoke from the merciful God the coming of longed-for reconciliation and peace for all the peoples involved (in the conflict)," he said in his homily.
|
